Microsoft Exchange admins got a bit of a rude surprise as the new year rang in, with a “latent date issue” striking the on-premises versions of Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 that saw emails queued up instead of being distributed to inboxes.The problem lay with Exchange’s malware scanning engine, however, Microsoft took great pains to emphasize in a blog post from the Exchange team that the problem relates to a date-check failure with the new year and it not a failure of the antivirus scanning engine itself, nor is it a security issue.To read this article in full, please click here
As the enterprise edge expands to encompass everything from the factory floor and oil rigs to solar arrays and retail stores, overcoming the challenges of processing, managing, and securing data traffic close to the source has become a top priority for many organizations.Enter edge gateways. These devices process data from sensors, monitors, industrial controllers, and other devices at the edge, passing only actionable information over the WAN to cloud and enterprise data centers while weeding out bandwidth-hogging noise—for example, pressure sensors on an oil rig showing everything is fine.
Read more: How to choose an edge gatewayTo read this article in full, please click here
As the enterprise edge expands to encompass everything from the factory floor and oil rigs to solar arrays and retail stores, overcoming the challenges of processing, managing, and securing data traffic close to the source has become a top priority for many organizations.Enter edge gateways. These devices process data from sensors, monitors, industrial controllers, and other devices at the edge, passing only actionable information over the WAN to cloud and enterprise data centers while weeding out bandwidth-hogging noise—for example, pressure sensors on an oil rig showing everything is fine.
Read more: How to choose an edge gatewayTo read this article in full, please click here
There’s no point in having a quantum computer if it’s not smokin’ fast; otherwise it’s way too much trouble, what with all the subzero temperatures and instability and such. So it’s always newsworthy when somebody sets a new standard for quantum computing processing speeds, even if quantum computers are far from common commercial use.In this case that somebody is IBM, which recently announced its newly developed quantum computing processor, called Eagle, has broken the 100-qubit barrier. IBM[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Fusion boldly (if clumsily) says it views Eagle “as a step in a technological revolution in the history of computation.” (It sounds like an algorithm wrote that sentence! Is this where you’re leading us, Big Blue? A quantum future of incoherent techspeak?)To read this article in full, please click here
The csplit command is unusual in that allows you to split text files into pieces based on their content. The command allows you to specify a contextual string and use it as a delimiter for identifying the chunks to be saved as separate files.As an example, if you wanted to separate diary entries into a series of files each with a single entry, you might do something like this.$ csplit -z diary '/^Dear/' '{*}'
153
123
136
In this example, "diary" is the name of the file to be split. The command is looking for lines that begin with the word "Dear" as in "Dear Diary" to determine where each chunk begins. The -z option tells csplit to not bother saving files that would be empty.To read this article in full, please click here
As the new year gets off to a start, it's always a good idea to commit to some changes that might improve your life or make your work more rewarding. So, here are some suggestions for Linux sysadmin resolutions for 2022.Learn some new commands
Even after using Linux for more than 30 years, I often find myself discovering some command that I didn't know about or didn't realize how much I could do with it. 2021 was the first year that I used the cheat command or used the --help option for commands more often that I read their man pages. I also started using the bpytop command fairly often. And, whenever I ran across a command I wasn't previously familiar with, I took the time to look it up, install it (if needed) on one or more of my Linux systems and play with it. Considering that I'm seeing nearly 2,000 files just in /usr/bin on my Fedora system, I'm not surprised that, even after 30+ years, I'm not familiar with all of them.To read this article in full, please click here
With all the discussion about the positive impacts 5G can have on internet access for individuals and businesses, it’s vital that network engineers keep in mind that 5G’s not the only cellular option for enterprise WANs—4G already delivers many of those benefits.Nemertes did research with organizations that have made significant commitments to 4G-based wireless in their WANs and identified four common use cases across the organizations. Each of those uses will be improved in several ways with the coming broad availability of 5G. Let’s take a look.To read this article in full, please click here
A partnership of seven organizations, including data center giant Equinix, announced plans to build fuel cells to power data centers. The group of mostly European companies is funded by a European Union clean energy initiative.Along with Equinix, the partners consist of infrastructure giant Vertiv, sustainable data center specialist InfraPrime, Italian utility Snam, German fuel cell manufacturer SOLIDpower, TEC4FUELS research center, and a research institute from Sweden called RISE.The project is called EcoEdge PrimePower (E2P2) and is funded by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, a European Union initiative launched earlier this month with total funding of nearly $25 billion. E2P2 will get roughly $2.8 million of that.To read this article in full, please click here
Here’s a paradox for you. Why is a technology that’s supported at the planning level by 90% of the telcos, and by the majority of enterprises, getting a bunch of negative press? Why is something that’s both 5G and open not being applauded by all?I’m referring to the Open RAN model for 5G, of course, and the answer to all these “Why?” questions could say a lot about our industry and have a significant impact on enterprises looking at deploying private 5G networks or even consuming a 5G network slice of their own.To read this article in full, please click here
The timedatectl command allows you to both query and change the system clock and its settings on Linux systems.To display the current settings, use the command by itself—with no arguments. You should see something like this:[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
$ timedatectl
Local time: Thu 2021-12-16 11:12:31 EST
Universal time: Thu 2021-12-16 16:12:31 UTC
RTC time: Thu 2021-12-16 16:12:31 <; real time clock
Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no
The fields shown include the local time, universal time (the same around the globe), RTC (the real-time clock, usually an integrated circuit), and the time zone (America/New York” is the Eastern US time zone). NTP is network time protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. In this case, the RTC it is not set to the local time zone.To read this article in full, please click here
After nearly two years of adopting major network and security changes wrought by COVID-19 and hybrid work, weary IT network and security teams didn’t need another big issue to take care of, but they have one: Stemming potential damage from the recently disclosed vulnerability in open source Java-logging Apache Log4j software. Log4j or Log4Shell has been around a long time—it was released in January, 2001—and is widely used in all manner of enterprise and consumer services, websites, and applications. Experts describe the system as an easy-to-use common utility to support client/server application development.To read this article in full, please click here
IBM and Samsung Electronics have designed what the tech giants call an unconventionally designed semiconductor that promises to reduce energy consumption by 85% over existing chips.The design would enable a ton of new applications including energy-efficient cryptomining and data encryption but also cell phone batteries that could hold a charge for over a week instead of days without being recharged, companies stated.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
The new semiconductor could also find its way into new internet of things (IoT) and edge devices that draw less energy, letting them operate in more diverse environments like ocean buoys, autonomous vehicles and spacecraft, the companies stated. To read this article in full, please click here
IBM and Samsung Electronics have designed what the tech giants call an unconventionally designed semiconductor that promises to reduce energy consumption by 85% over existing chips.The design would enable a ton of new applications including energy-efficient cryptomining and data encryption but also cell phone batteries that could hold a charge for over a week instead of days without being recharged, companies stated.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
The new semiconductor could also find its way into new internet of things (IoT) and edge devices that draw less energy, letting them operate in more diverse environments like ocean buoys, autonomous vehicles and spacecraft, the companies stated. To read this article in full, please click here
Intel announced a collaboration with Inspur, Ruijie Networks, and Silicom Connectivity Solutions to design and develop new infrastructure processing units (IPU) using both a CPU and FPGA.IPU--what Intel calls a data-processing unit (DPU)--is a programmable networking device designed to offload network processing tasks such as storage virtualization, network virtualization, and security from the CPU. That reduces overhead and frees up the CPU to focus on its primary data-processing functions. They are becoming a real growth industry, with multiple products on the market from Nvidia, Marvell, Fungible, and Xilinx.To read this article in full, please click here
Intel announced a collaboration with Inspur, Ruijie Networks, and Silicom Connectivity Solutions to design and develop new infrastructure processing units (IPU) using both a CPU and FPGA.IPU—what Intel calls a data-processing unit (DPU)—is a programmable networking device designed to offload network processing tasks such as storage virtualization, network virtualization, and security from the CPU. That reduces overhead and frees up the CPU to focus on its primary data-processing functions. They are becoming a real growth industry, with multiple products on the market from Nvidia, Marvell, Fungible, and Xilinx.To read this article in full, please click here
The ncdu command provides a useful and convenient way to view disk usage. The name stands for "NCurses disk usage". This means that it's based on ncurses which, like curses, is a terminal control library used on Unix/Linux systems. The curses part of each name is a pun on "cursor" or "cursor optimization" and is unrelated to the use of foul language.You can think of ncdu as a disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface. It can be especially useful when looking for disk-space hogs on a remote server for which you don't have access to a graphical interface.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
To use ncdu, you can just type "ncdu", but what you will see depends on where you have positioned yourself in the file system as it reports the space used by files and directories in that location.To read this article in full, please click here
Magnetic storage tape has’t been the recommended destination for the initial backup copy of data for quite some time, and the question is whether LTO-9, the latest tape open standard, and other market dynamics will changed that.Here's a look at modern tape drives, discussion of the degree to which ransomware changes the equation, and a closer look at LTO-9.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Tape drives: Too fast for their own good?In the 80s and early 90s, there was almost a perfect match between the speed of tape drives and the speed of the backup infrastructure. The backup drives were capable of writing at roughly the same speed that the backup system could send.To read this article in full, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) subsidiary Aruba Networks has announced a new offering, called EdgeConnect Microbranch, designed to simplify the complexity of work-from-home networking for enterprises.The COVID-19 pandemic has forced enterprises to change the way they use their networks as they had to support an increasing number of users and devices connecting from remote locations. During the pandemic the number of workers working remotely for enterprises jumped, reaching 72% of the total workforce, compared to just 38% before COVID hit, according to an IDC survey. The survey also showed that enterprises expect that more than half of their employees will work remotely in one way or another, indicating the need of a long-term shift in network architectures.To read this article in full, please click here
In my surveys of enterprises, the number worried about vendor lock-in has hovered around 90% for 30 years. When you ask enterprises how they avoid it, they respond “standard interfaces” or “open-source”. Even today, the percentage who include “managing APIs” in their list of lock-in avoidance measures is in the statistical noise level, but APIs are perhaps the fastest-growing lock-in problem today, and they’re surely going to become a major problem in the future.API stands for “application programming interface”, but the term is broadly used in software today to describe the interfaces between all the software components used in an application, a cloud, or even a network. APIs let pieces of software talk with each other, and they’re essential in every situation where software components rather than hardware devices are connected. What’s creating a challenge in lock-in from APIs today is the fact that networking is shifting more to software, which means it’s shifting to a model where APIs are just as important as those standard interfaces, and enterprises aren’t tracking that important shift.To read this article in full, please click here
The proposed Nvidia-Arm merger had another roadblock thrown in front of it when the US Federal Trade Commission’s filed a lawsuit objecting to the $40 billion deal last week.The acquisition met with almost immediate opposition from UK entities when it was announced in September 2020. Now, 15 months laster the FTC weighs in and has set an administrative trial for Aug. 9, 2022.“Tomorrow’s technologies depend on preserving today’s competitive, cutting-edge chip markets,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition in a statement. “This proposed deal would distort Arm’s incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia’s rivals.”To read this article in full, please click here